No Left Turns

What Do Jihadists Want? World-Wide Shari’a

Daniel Pipes simply quotes Bin-Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders to demonstrate that what the terrorists and suicide bombers want is nothing less than to establish Islamic Law throughout the world. (Hat-tip: NRO)

That goal seems so absurd we westerners have trouble taking it seriously.

Discussions - 5 Comments

Simeon Stylites

I think Lee Harriss notion of "fantasy ideology" is helpful in understanding what were up against. The short of it: Weve become props in the violent neurosis of a certain segment of the Muslim world that really does believe it can replay the 7th century, and this time win all the marbles.

After the 3/11 bombings, the election of the appeaser Zapatero, and the Spanish pullout from Iraq, Spanish authorities broke up another big terror plot. Doubtless there will be more to come. Thats because bin Laden and his ilk dont accept anything about 1492 ("the tragedy of al-Andalus") or the Battle of Tours for that matter, as final.

Its ironic that European elites hate and revile Israel so much, for Europe is now in the process of becoming Israel (i.e., in Muslim eyes a bunch of infidels allegedly squatting on allegedly "Muslim" land) on a larger scale. My hunch is that the Euro-elites are already dhimmified: Their cheerleading for the Palestinians and attacks on Israel are quietly desperate attempts to curry favor with the Muslim tide coming from the south, not that any of it will save them should the Muslims get the upper hand.

Heres something from Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker on the post-3/11 terror attempt in Spain:

As José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero declared victory, he again condemned the war in Iraq and reiterated his intention to withdraw troops.

Four days later, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, a group claiming affiliation with Al Qaeda, sent a bombastic message to the London newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi, avowing responsibility for the train bombings. “Whose turn will it be next?” the authors taunt. “Is it Japan, America, Italy, Britain, Saudi Arabia, or Australia?” The message also addressed the speculation that the terrorists would try to replicate their political success in Spain by disrupting the November U.S. elections. “We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections,” the authors write. Bush’s “idiocy and religious fanaticism” are useful, the authors contend, for they stir the Islamic world to action.

On April 2nd, two weeks after the election, a security guard for the ave, Spain’s high-speed train line, discovered a blue plastic bag beside the tracks forty miles south of Madrid. Inside the bag were twenty-six pounds of Goma-2. Four hundred and fifty feet of cable had been draped across the security fence and attached, incorrectly, to the detonator. Had the bomb gone off when the ave passed by—at a hundred and eighty m.p.h., carrying twelve hundred passengers—the results could have been far more catastrophic than those of March 11th. Spanish citizens asked themselves: If the bombings of March 11th had accomplished the goals set by Al Qaeda, what was the point of April 2nd?

Where does it play in that inciting a crime is a crime itself. Star, I would you say you right that preaching murder is not a religous right, it is a crime because it inciting the public (aka. the people attending the mosque) to commit a crime.

Mohammad Bouyeri shot Theo van Gogh more than a dozen times, slit his throat, and then used to knife to pin an Islamofascist jihad manifesto to his chest. On a public street. In broad daylight. In front of about 50 eyewitnesses. Van Gogh, long known as a controversialist in Dutch public life, had made a film criticizing Muslim attitudes toward the treatment of women.

Different European countries do have different policy approaches toward incitement. The French, who has always had a strong "raison detat" tradition, have few qualms about deporting undesirable imams, etc. The Dutch and the British, with traditions that incline more in the direction of a robust libertarianism and less in the direction of zeal for state security than the French, have been more "hands-off." But of course that may be changing, and probably none too soon.

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